Saturday, January 07, 2006

Are Demcoracts getting tougher? It seems that the Democrats smell blood and are moving in for the kill. In the Saturday radio response to Bush's weekly radio address, the Democrats attacked the Republican party, rather than Ambramoff and "a few bad apples," as the root of the corruption problem in Washington.

This is exactly what the Democrats need to do. They need to make the 2006 election be about Abramoff and Haliburton and no-bid contracts in Iraq and post-Katrina.

4 comments:

While I agree that the Democrats need to really pound on Republican corrpution and malfeasance, I think the Democrats also need to give the voters something to vote for, not just vote against. Just talking about scandals won't cut it.

So yes, make the Republicans spend all their time defending themselves from Abramoff, Haliburton, etc, while the Democrats talk about how to tackle health insurance and a NEW strategy for the global struggle against terrorism. (The Democrats, er, just need to find that strategy...)

I think a place to start would be a balanced budget. They can link that to the corruption thing by pointing to all the pork Republicans have been putting into the budget for the last several years. The increase since 2000 in lobbyists (nearly all Republican) and pork barrel amendments to bills is staggering.

New global strategy against terrorism:We need the help of Europe, China, India, Russia, Africa, and moderate Arab states. We have to build that coalition through trust, compromise, and - above all - showing them respect. This means a radical change from deriding our allies as "old Europe" and saying "either you're with us or you're agin' us" to the messy work of diplomacy and bridge-building. When the day comes that the rest of the world are our eyes and ears, we will be far, far safer than we are now.

When will an American president seriously talk to the Arab league? Or have a tete-a-tete with Iran? Or, jeeez, with Venezuela...